A Change in Character
by Stop Looking At My Name
Summary: Miranda worries that she'll grow up to be an evil tyrant - so does the Doctor. Based on the book Father Time by Lance Parkin. It's my first fanfic so please read and review.


Miranda, Rachel, Stephanie, and Stacey were having a sleepover. Quite probably the last sleepover they'd ever have together considering that Miranda was moving away tomorrow. Miranda wasn't sure how she should feel about that.

On the one hand, moving away was a sad occasion; she'd have to leave behind all her friends and her home (although she'd only been living with the Doctor for a few months) and she had a ton of worries about whether her new school would be nice and whether the other children would like her.

On the other hand, moving away was a great opportunity; they were going to live in a nice big house and she would be going to a good school and almost certainly make lots of new friends (she was quite a popular person). She would also be able to leave behind all the sad memories of her first adoptive parents. Sometimes after school she'd think she was waiting for her mum and not her new father. Once when she'd walked into the sweet shop Mr. Cosmo had started to ask when her dad would be coming round to fix his telly before remembering that John and Kim were dead now, and that John Dawkins would never be coming round to fix his telly like he kept promising he would.

The Doctor was a good parent though, not like a parent at all really. More like a friend who just happened to be a lot older than her (and the Doctor was a _lot_ older, he'd told her he was over a hundred years old and shown her a note written by someone called Fitz indicating he would live until at least 2001). The Doctor was very different to her old adoptive parents: He bought her a chemistry set and encouraged her to do odd experiments, he would quite happily stay up all night playing chess with her, he let her have an equal say on any subject rather than saying that he was the adult and therefore in charge, and he was (as far as Miranda could tell) completely honest with her.

Miranda, Stephanie, Rachel, and Stacey spent the first part of the evening making plans about what they wanted to do in the future. They were eleven years old now, after all, and had done their SATs and everything so they felt it was about time they started making plans that would affect their whole lives. Rachel was dead set on becoming a nurse and Stacey was equally determined to become a famous actress in Hollywood, a profession she'd been adamant on since her dad had found an old film reel of _Dulcima_ and played it repeatedly on a projector "borrowed" from Greyfrith High School.

Stephanie wasn't sure what she wanted to do, and when pressured by her friends to pick an occupation fretted as though this were some legally binding obligation and not some childish game. In the end Stephanie decided she would be an actress with Stacey, which led to all the girls inventing their own play and rehearsing it, planning to show it to the Doctor once they'd done.

The play started out as being about four explorers who found a secret cave full of treasure and ended up being cursed but as the game progressed the explorers turned into a gang of fearsome criminals, hatching an evil plan to steal the world's largest diamond and kill the James Bond-like hero (played by Stacey) trying to stop them.

The Doctor called the girls down from Miranda's bedroom at half past six and gave them all omelettes and lemonade (both of which he'd made himself). After dinner the girls performed the play for him, for which he gave them a round of applause, despite the mix-up halfway through when Stephanie and Rachel forgot their characters' names and had to revert to their real ones.

At half past nine the girls were too tired out to carry on playing and decided to go to bed. Rachel and Stephanie were up well past their bedtime anyway and pretending to be Star Wars characters was tiring. Rachel had been Princess Leia, Stephanie had been Han Solo, Stacey had been Luke Skywalker, and Miranda had been Darth Vader. The others had been surprised at Miranda's choice but she felt there was something attractive about being one of the most dangerous and feared people in the galaxy. And using the Force to crush people's throats without touching them was an undeniably awesome skill.

By ten o'clock everyone except Miranda was asleep. Miranda didn't need much sleep, indeed she could do without it. There was something bothering her but she couldn't quite work out what it was. She turned over in her sleeping bag (she'd sacrificed her bed for Rachel) and squirmed a little, trying to figure out what was keeping her awake.

An image from Star Wars came into her head; Darth Vader choking one of his allies using the Force, the skill she'd thought was cool. Something about having acted like Darth Vader, even if it was only for a silly children's game, unsettled her. She scrambled out of the sleeping bag as silently as she could, trying not to wake the others.

She walked down to the living room. Well it was supposed to be a living room but, like almost every other room in the house, it was more of a library than anything else. The Doctor's (and a few of Miranda's) books were piled on every surface. There was a cleared space on the sofa where Miranda would normally watch the TV. When the Doctor was in the room, as he was now, he sat in the armchair. As usual he wasn't watching the TV but was instead staring intently at an in-progress chess game he was playing against himself on their battered travel chess set.

"Dad?" Asked Miranda. Most children would have said it as a way to announce their presence, not as an actual question. Miranda still wasn't sure whether she should call the Doctor dad or not. She could hardly call him "Doctor" all through her life, could she? But maybe dad was a bit weird so soon after John Dawkins' death.

"What is it Mir?" The Doctor was the only person who called her Mir, all her friends called her Rand. Maybe she should come up with a special nickname for him, the same way he had for her?

"I couldn't sleep. Something's bothering me." Best to get straight to the point, even though Miranda wasn't quite sure what that point was just yet.

"What is it?"

"Earlier on we were talking about what jobs we wanted to have when we were older and Rachel said she wanted to be a nurse and Stacey and Stephanie want to be actresses and no one asked what I wanted to be so I never said, but…"

"You're worried they're not including you?" Guessed the Doctor

Miranda shook her head. "No, it's not that. It's just that I couldn't think of anything that I wanted to be and then later on we were playing Star Wars and I was pretending I was Darth Vader – remember I said it'd be fun to be Darth Vader once, dad?"

"Yes, I do." Said the Doctor. She'd said it on the same day her first adoptive parents had been murdered (although she thought they'd died in a car crash. The Doctor could remember every conversation he'd ever had with Miranda, and with everyone else. He could perfectly remember every single detail of his life from waking up in that train carriage just over a hundred years ago to now.

"I'm scared that I'll want to be like Darth Vader when I grow up. I'm scared I'll be mean and want to hurt people and stuff." Miranda wasn't alone in her fears, although she had no way of knowing that the inhabitants of a far-future civilisation were trying to find her, to kill her, to avoid her becoming some sort of despotic tyrant as she grew up. It was times like this that the Doctor was reminded of how grateful he was that Prefect Zevron was dead and his Deputy Sallak safely imprisoned.

"It was just a game, Mir." The Doctor comforted her gently, wondering if all children had these fears or if there genuinely was something different about Miranda's species that made them have a tendency towards violence. "You pretended to shoot Stacey in that play but that doesn't mean you want to kill your friends, does it?"

Miranda walked up to the Doctor and hugged him, pressing her face into his chest. "You don't think I'll ever kill someone then, dad?" She decided that the name dad fit him perfectly. They looked very similar and he just _felt_ like he was the right person to be her dad.

"No." Said the Doctor. He was certain that he would never let that happen, never let her become that type of person.

The Doctor let Miranda cling onto him for a few more minutes before challenging her to the game of chess he'd previously been playing against himself. Miranda won, viciously sacrificing her pawns to help get her knights in a position to checkmate his king.

Just over five years later Miranda shot Deputy Sallak twice in the chest, went on the run, and eventually became the leader of a Faction that – despite their desire for freedom and fairness – killed their enemies in order to get what they wanted. The Doctor never thought of his daughter as cruel or evil, but he was always reminded of the girl who didn't like to be beaten, who was a sore loser in a swimming race, and who was perfectly happy to sacrifice her pawns if it meant she could take the other side's king.

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**That was my first ever fanfic so please review. If people actually read it I might write some other ones of Miranda growing up with the Doctor, I'm not sure enough people know she exists though which is a shame because she was such a great character.**

**By the way I don't own any of Doctor Who and I didn't write the book Father Time either so all the characters, etc. are not mine.**


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